Getting ready for Thanksgiving

Time to catch up here!  There was absolutely no chance to do this on Friday or Saturday, my normal blogging days, so I will do two separate posts.  I know that most of my readers keep up with me on Facebook, so this may seem redundant, but as I've said before, my main purpose for keeping up this blog is for our family.  It is a diary of sorts.  

Going back to Sunday, November 22, we had a big surprise when we woke up that morning.  Our first snow!  Just a light snow, but it was so beautiful as I stepped out onto the porch.  

We went to our service at GBRV and then to Calvary.  Austin and Hunter wanted to come to our house afterward and were here for the afternoon, but somehow I did not take any pictures.  In the evening we met Anthony and Lori to hand them over, then we did a little bit of grocery shopping.  Dick mentioned several times that he didn't know why he felt so exhausted.  

On Monday morning he was very sick with no strength at all.  He could hardly get up from the bed, and later I had to help him get up from the couch.  He was very dizzy and slept most of the day.  As the day progressed his strength and balance came back, thankfully.  That was pretty scary!

On Tuesday morning he felt better, but his throat hurt and his glands were swollen.  So he went to our local urgent care facility to be sure it wasn't strep.  They ruled that out and said he apparently had a virus.  He went to work for the rest of the day and also Wednesday.  I'll get ahead of my story here to say that three days later he got a call that it was in fact strep!  So he was prescribed an antibiotic.  Unfortunately, he is now dealing with a terrible cough.  That's how colds do, move from place to annoying place.  I hope he can soon feel All Better.  Maybe we should have Hunter kiss him and put a bandaid on him, hahaha!

I had given our house a thorough cleaning on Saturday, so I didn't have that to do in preparation for our Thanksgiving guests.  But I did prepare some food ahead, and had beds to prepare.  On Tuesday evening I made the favorite cookies.  I think I made five dozen, but I should have made more.  They are such a hit.

On Wednesday I roasted the turkey, because I have never yet figured out how to roast the turkey on Thanksgiving day when I have so many other things needing the oven.  I like to get it done and out of the way.  This year I tried a dry brine of thyme, lemon zest, and kosher salt.  I had put that on the turkey on Monday and then covered it tightly with plastic wrap for two days.   It came out really beautiful and delicious.  I do wish I could time things so we could put a beautiful roasted turkey on our Thanksgiving table like you see in all the pictures.  But instead I cut it up, kept it in a big bowl in the fridge overnight, and then put in in my big slow cooker on Thursday.  

While I was roasting that I was also making fried rice and sweet and sour pork for Anthony and Lori's dinner.  Whew!  Till all that was done and everything was cleaned up I was almost sick of washing pots and pans before it was even Thanksgiving, haha!  

On Wednesday evening we had a Thanksgiving Eve service at GBRV.  The choir sang "Thank You, Lord."  I just love the lyrics in the verse.  "For all that You've done I will thank you, for all that You're going to do, for all that You've promised and all that You are is all that has carried me through, Jesus, I thank you."  We had time for sharing our thanksgivings at the service.  I think we all were most touched when our precious Gladys (in her nineties) shared some really powerful stories.  I love her so much!  She's had some skin cancer lesions removed from her scalp recently, thus the beanie.  So adorable!

We knew that Bjorn and Jess were on their way to our house and had told them how to get in if they arrived before we got home from church.  But we actually got here at the very same time!   How fun to have them here!!  We hadn't seen them since June!

I wanted to get a picture of them before going to bed.  Bjorn said, "No smiling.  This is engineering!" He has a very, very heavy credit load of high level engineering courses this semester.

Jess is finishing up her semester of student teaching and will graduate in December.  Bjorn will graduate in May.  There is light at the end of the tunnel!!

Two more pictures for this post.  There was an amazing sunrise one morning last week.

I think I made a decision last week about my hair.  I've been covering the gray ever since I was in my 40's, maybe even before that.  I'm not sure I can imagine the process of going gray/white, and I think some it will still be brown, which may look bad, but I'll let my hairdresser help me figure it out.  I used an app to see how I'd look with gray hair, but of course apps probably make it look better than real life.  I might even chicken out.  We shall see. 

Hopefully later today I can find the time to post all about our Thanksgiving weekend.